


Pack

by elumish



Series: Werewolves 101 [9]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Angst and Fluff, F/M, M/M, Pack Cuddles, Pack Feels, Professor Stiles Stilinski, Writer Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I said no.” Derek prowls towards him now, and it would be hot if it wasn’t…now. “It’s not safe. You’re not going.”</p><p>Oh, Stiles is so not up for having this conversation right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: I got rid of the Scott/Kira tag because even though I had wanted to explore their relationship it seems like that probably won't happen in this piece. Hopefully I can do that in a later one.

“I’m going back to Beacon Hills.”

Derek stops his half-pacing, half-prowling to look at Stiles, and he looks incredulous. Which is kind of absurd, because Stiles has been packing for the past half-hour, trying to locate his like four shirts that he can put on with an immobilized shoulder. “No.”

Stiles blinks at him. “What?”

“I said no.” Derek prowls towards him now, and it would be hot if it wasn’t…now. “It’s not safe. You’re not going.”

Oh, Stiles is so not up for having this conversation right now. “Remember that conversation when we agreed that whatever Dom stuff you do is only for sex, not for the rest of our relationship? Remember that it was up there with neither of us liking humiliation shit and you not being willing to hurt me even if I begged you to? So yeah, we’re not doing that. I’m going to Beacon Hills.”

Derek grimaces. “Then I’ll go with you.”

“No.” At that, Derek shuts down. Entirely. Face blank, shoulders up, hands clenched into fists. Which, fuck, is not what Stiles is looking for. “Look, I’m going back to my pack, just for a couple days, and I need to remind my alpha that I’m not dead before you meet him because right now he wants to tear your throat out. So once I get there I’ll ask if you can come to the territory. But right now I need to go by myself.”

Derek’s expression loosens a little, but his shoulders don’t go down. “It’s not safe.”

Agh. “It’s my pack. I’ll be safe.” Stiles sighs, then steps up towards Derek, hooking his hand behind his neck and giving him a kiss. “Hey. It’s going to be okay.”

Derek leans forward to rest his forehead against Stiles’s, then pulls away, looking down. “I told you you could go and that I would let you.”

It takes Stiles a second to figure out what he’s saying, because what the fuck? “Excuse me?”

“You don’t need to convince me of anything.” Derek sounds nonchalant, but his hands are shaking, and Jesus fuck he’s trying so hard and Stiles doesn’t understand why.

“Derek.” He reaches towards him, but Derek jerks away so there are a few inches between them. Which, fuck, Stiles fucked something up and he’s not sure what. “Will you look at me for a minute?”

There’s a second, and then Derek looks up to meet his eye, and wow, he looks fucking miserable. “What?”

Stiles doesn’t reach for him again, because if Derek doesn’t want to be touched, he’s not going to push it. “I’m not breaking up with you.” Derek’s cheek twitches, which could mean literally anything from ‘I believe you’ to ‘my nose is itchy’. “I’m serious. This isn’t me breaking up with you. This is really not me breaking up with you. If you want to break up with me, we can have that conversation. It’ll suck, but we can have that conversation—” Derek’s mouth closes over his, hard and a little desperate, and Stiles kisses him back for a second before pulling away. “—if you want.”

“No.”

And now Derek is being monosyllabic, which is really fucking unhelpful. “No to what?”

“I don’t want to have that conversation.”

Oh thank God. “Great. Yay. Neither do I. Okay. But I really do need to head up to Beacon Hills by myself, because I really do not want Scott trying to beat the shit out of you. Or Isaac. Because watching Isaac fight is like watching a puppy dog fight, except with fangs and more daddy issues.” Derek blinks at him, and right, Derek doesn’t actually know Isaac. “Anyway. I really do want you to meet my pack and my dad, but I need to go up there first. Okay?”

It takes Derek a few seconds, and then he sighs. “Okay.”

“Great.” Stiles looks back at his suitcase, which looks like it was packed by a four-year-old with hand-eye coordination issues. “Now do you want to help me fold my socks?”

\--

The car ride to Beacon Hills takes just under two hours. It usually takes less time, but he really doesn’t trust himself to drive his normal speed with only one working arm. And he always feels like he should feel something when he passes into pack territory, like there should be some tug on his heart or something sappy like that when he passes over the border line, but there’s nothing.

Not that that makes coming home any worse; he loves Beacon Hills, and holy shit it’s a relief to be somewhere where the people with the most control are his father’s department and his pack. Somewhere where he’s safe.

His dad knows that he’s coming, but he’s at work, so Stiles heads over to Deaton’s clinic where Scott is working; Deaton is their emissary (and apparently used to be the Hale emissary, which is now really fucking weird), and Scott is a vet at the clinic. Because there’s basically no more alpha-y thing than taking care of hurt animals on your territory.

There’s nobody at the front, so Stiles hops the counter (hooray for being a human and so being able to pass over a mountain ash line, for so many reasons) and heads to the back, where he can hear Deaton and Scott talking. They’re hovering over a sad-looking puppy (fluffier than Isaac, but without the cheekbones), so Stiles hangs back in the doorway for a minute, just watching.

It’s been two months since he’s seen Scott, and he hadn’t realized how stretched the pack bond felt (as much as he can feel it, and it must be so much worse for Scott) until the tension released and something settled in his chest. It’ll be even better once he’s with the entire pack, though he’s not sure if Lydia’s coming, because she’s supposedly at some math…thing.

That leaves Isaac, Liam, Allison, Kira, and the candle they’ll light for Aiden. Their pack is stable now, or as stable it can be given that they don’t all live in the territory, but it wasn’t always that way, and they lost more than they should have before things settled down.

In front of him, Scott looks up from the puppy, then spots Stiles and practically trips over the metal table to get to him; he wraps him in a hug that would hurt like hell if he weren’t also draining Stiles’s pain like it was an Olympic sport. Stiles hugs him back with his good arm, and for the first time in a while he feels safe.

And then Scott pulls back to scowl at him. “You look like shit.”

“Gee thanks.” Not that it’s not true, but still. “You’re no spring chicken, yourself.”

Scott blinks at him. “What the hell is a spring chicken?”

“I don’t know. When’s the meeting?”

“I’m assuming you’re planning on having dinner with your dad, so how about nine?”

Fantastic. “And will super-father of our terrifyingly competent archer be there?”

Scott rolls his eyes, pulling away to go wash his hands in the sink; Deaton is still dealing with the dog behind him. Because, right, Scott has a job, and he’s there. And Deaton is cool about them doing pack things there, but Scott should probably actually do his job. “No, Chris isn’t invited. This is just pack.”

“You invite him sometimes.”

Scott goes back to doing dog things to the dog. “I invite him when the territory is in danger and the pack-affiliated need to know, just like your dad. But as far as I know, we’re not at risk, and I’d really rather not deal with Allison’s dad right now, because he still threatens to shoot me every once in a while. And after the meeting you’re getting some sleep, which I’m guessing isn’t going to happen if Chris Argent is there.”

Probably not, but, “I’ll just go sleep back home.”

“Right.” Scott doesn’t even look up at him. “You’re stressed and in pain; you’re going to pace until three in the morning and then make pancakes.”

It had been waffles last night, but Stiles wasn’t going to admit that. “I’m fine.”

“Sure. How’s your pain medication working for you?” Scott doesn’t even wait for Stiles to answer. “Bring pie.”

“Pie. Yes. I can do pie.” It feels so damn good to be with pack, again, to be able to have some amount of normality when he feels like he’s halfway to coming apart. He wants Derek there, too, but it’s good to have a day or so to not think about the clusterfuck the time at the Pack Alliance was. “I’ll see you at nine. Bye, Deaton.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Stilinski.”

\--

He makes meatloaf for his dad in celebration of him being home because he knows his dad has been being good about eating heart-healthy (because he has half the Sheriff’s department reporting to him about it) and because he really wants meatloaf, and then he starts making pie and ends up with five of them because hello stress cooking, and then he makes some chocolate chip cookies because he has another half an hour before his dad is getting back and he does not want to have loose time because he’s not really in the best headspace.

He can bake like this with only one hand because of the magic of the food processor, but every twitch of his fucked up arm reminds him of everything else, and that is not a good place to be when he’s alone in his kitchen.

He’s going to need to have Derek meet his pack, and he really wants Derek to meet his dad, but Derek is also one big hunky visual reminder of the clusterfuck that was the attack on the Pack Alliance, and he needs a little bit of time to not have that, because he’s hitting the mood-swing/irrational anger part of his reaction, and he really needs to be somewhere else before he says something he regrets.

Things tend to get really fucked up in his head after trauma, which he knows way better than he probably should, and he has a tendency to take it out on whoever is around him. And it’s not like it’s so much better to do that to his pack or his dad, but they know how to deal with it, and they can calm him down like nobody else. Because pack is family, even if that’s not something that he can quantify in academic research, no matter how hard he’s tried.

“Stiles?”

Stiles starts and pivots, heart pounding in his chest, because holy shit he didn’t notice his dad walking in and that almost gave him a fucking heart attack. And his dad looks worried now, though that might also be because of the gunshot wound, which tends to worry cops. And parents.

“Hi, dad.” He plasters a smile on his face. “I have meatloaf. Well, I made meatloaf. And pie. Which you’re not allowed to eat, because I’m bringing it to the pack.”

His dad blinks at him. “All…four of them?”

“Five.” Stiles picks up the meatloaf plate and carries it over to the table, and his dad grabs the cauliflower, which is a disgusting vegetable but good for his dad, so they’ll suffer through it together. “And yes. They’re werewolves. And…others. So pie. Five pies. One pie for each of them.”

“And the cookies are for you?”

Stiles beams at him which, yeah, probably a little over the top. “Exactly.”

They sit down, and his dad looks even more worried now. “Are you okay? I know you’re not a kid anymore, but you’re still my kid, and you got caught in the middle of a firefight less than a week ago.”

“I’m—” There are all of the things he wants to say, but most of them are lies, and the others aren’t particularly true. “Not really.” He shoves his hand through his hair, and wow, he doesn’t feel hungry anymore. “I mean, I’m—pack is going to help, and it’ll be better once my arm starts to heal, but I’m just trying really hard not to think about it.”

His dad shoots him a knowing look. “How is that going for you?”

“Not particularly well.” He takes a slice of meatloaf just to have something to do with his hands. “Going to meet Derek’s pack didn’t particularly—it wasn’t supposed to go like that. And his uncle is a psycho, which didn’t really help with anything.”

“I want to tell you never to do that again, but it would be pointless, and I know you’re not going to listen to me because it’s not who you are, and that’s what’s great about you.” Stiles know his dad hates that, that Stiles doesn’t back away from things, but he can’t imagine living any other way. “So are you okay with Derek?”

Another thing Stiles doesn’t want to think about. “He’s being overprotective, and I know it makes sense, and I know I’m used to it, but it’s like being smothered, and I can’t do that right now, because I’m going to drown.” Stiles shrugs. “So—so I really like him, I really really like him, but I can’t have a relationship where I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“And you feel like that?” And oh look, interrogation mode. Stiles appreciates it, but also sometimes it sucks to have a cop as a dad.

“I don’t know.” He looks down at his plate; it looks like he’s smashed his meatloaf to mush. “Not really, I don’t think, but it could go there, and I like that he cares, I really like that he cares, but I just—I don’t know.” He shoves a bit of meatloaf-mush into his mouth so he doesn’t have to keep talking about it. “I’m going to pack at nine, by the way, so if you want to interrogate me on anything else, you only have until then.”

His dad laughs, and some of the tension finally breaks. “Good to know.”


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles shows up at Scott’s house with four pies and a container of cookies. His dad can have the fifth. He’s been good. Also Stiles can’t figure out how to carry all five pies at the same time.

Liam greets him in front of Scott’s apartment and takes the four pies and the container, which Stiles is trying to juggle between his hand and his sling, then does the weird herding thing that Derek is so fond of (and huh, Stiles really hopes that’s not just a romantic thing and is instead just a protectiveness thing that was never this much of an issue before because he is never going to fuck Liam, ew) to get Stiles into the apartment.

Scott is poking at something on the stove, which is about the height of his cooking ability, with Isaac actually cooking (and of course they’re having more food even though Stiles already ate, because these are werewolves and they would literally eat a horse if they were allowed), and Kira and Lydia (holy shit, what is Lydia doing here?) and Malia are sprawled across one of the couches and a chair, Lydia playing with Kira’s hair. There’s a candle burning in the corner of the room on a little table.

They all look up when he walks in, and then Lydia is on her feet, wrapping her arms around him; he holds her with his good arm, burying his face in her hair, and she smells like cinnamon and sugar and not-pain. “You stupid fucking moron.” Her grip tightens on him, though she’s careful of his arm. “You stupid goddamn asshole, you are not going to get yourself shot again. We are not going through this a third time, we are not going through this where we can’t get to you, I don’t care if you have to let the rest of the world die, you are not doing this again.”

“Sorry.” He curls up on her, needing the contact, needing pack. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You had better be.” She breathes a warm spot on his shoulder. “You had damn well better be.”

Scott’s voice comes from where he’s standing. “Let him breathe.”

Lydia holds on for another few seconds, then lets go and moves so she’s on his good side, an arm wrapped around his waist. “Right. So…food, and then we’re going to talk.”

Fan-fucking-tastic. “But I don’t want to talk,” he whines, and they all laugh at him. Assholes.

“You got yourself shot,” Scott reminds him, which is totally unnecessary, because Stiles remembers he was shot. “You get yourself shot, you have to talk.”

“That’s not the rule. How is that the rule? You get shot all the time, and you don’t need to go through pack therapy every time.”

Scott turns away from kitchen where he’s not doing anything productive, and wow, he looks not happy. More not happy than before, though that might be because before he had a puppy, and now he doesn’t have a puppy. Unless they counted Isaac. “That’s because I heal in an hour, and you don’t. We’re not going to play the game where I pat you on your head and tell you nice job, let’s go watch a movie now, and we all pretend you didn’t fuck up.”

Stiles’s temper flares. “Fuck you, I saved lives, and don’t tell me you wouldn’t have don’t the same thing, even when you were human.”

“I haven’t been human since I was a teenager.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” He pushes towards Scott, and Lydia pulls away, which is probably a good idea, because Stiles is pissed. “Why are you trying to convince me that I did something wrong when it’s something that everyone in this room would have done given the chance.”

“I wouldn’t,” Isaac announces from his spot at the stove, and Scott actually _growls_ at him, which is a really fucking bad idea, because Isaac drops to the floor, pan clattering and spitting on the stove, and Stiles shoves past to him because no way in hell is he letting being pissed and tired and in pain hurt Isaac (because for all that he’s grown, more than any of the rest of them, he’s still that abused kid who can tell when people are angry and hides so nobody hurts him). He’s whimpering, hands over his head shaking so hard they’re practically vibrating, and fuck fuck fuck this isn’t okay. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Stiles reaches out and puts a hand on the pack of Isaac’s neck, pulling his head against his good shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. You know he’s not going to hurt you, none of us are going to hurt you.” Scott crouches down on the other side, and Stiles adds, “See, he’s here now, and he’s not angry. Come on, try to breathe, we don’t need you hulking out on us.”

After a few goddawful seconds, Isaac snorts through his shaking. “Liam is the jolly green giant, not me.”

Oh thank God. “That’s right.” Stiles jerks his head towards the stove, because Isaac will be upset if the food burns (will think it’s his fault, and they don’t need that look in his eyes to stay), and Scott reaches up to turn off the flame, then puts his hand on the other side of Isaac’s neck. “You’re good. You’re going to be good.”

Scott adds, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Isaac pulls in a deep breath, then stills and leans his head back against the oven, groaning. “Fuck. Sorry.”

“Eh.” Stiles makes himself smile as he shrugs. “You made everyone forgot about me, so it’s all good in my book.” Isaac looks at him, then reaches out to put a hand on Stiles’s shoulder to start pain-draining him, which, fuck no; Stiles jerks away from him, because that’s not happening. Even though his shoulder is starting to throb. “You’re not taking my pain.”

“You were shot.” Isaac shrugs like it’s no big deal, which is totally is, because they have an unspoken rule that they don’t let Isaac do that. Because he spent enough of his life in pain, and they’re not going to contribute to it.

Scott takes over from there, standing and brushing his hands off on his pants. “I’ll do it. You up to finishing dinner?”

Isaac nods. “Yeah. It’s basically done, I just need to move it to actual plates. Couch or table?”

Scott looks around, then down at Stiles. “Couch. Thanks.” Stiles stands, and Scott nudges him towards the couch, which would be presumptuous, except it’s Scott. Isaac is still shaking, but nobody’s going to comment on it, because Isaac doesn’t want them to. “Come on. Time for a puppy pile.”

Stiles grins at that, because hell yeah, he loves puppy piles. Being away from the territory, especially before he met Derek but sometimes even now, he doesn’t get enough touch, and this won’t make up for it, but it helps. And they’ll figure out how to work around his fucked up arm, because they have enough human-y people and have dealt with enough injuries to know how to not hurt them.

Stiles flops down in the middle of one of Scott’s giant couches, which, ow, and then Lydia drapes her feet across his lap and Scott sits down on the other side of him with Kira curled up against him and Liam on the other side of him. Liam always stays on the outside of these things; he’s the newest, and he missed a lot of the shit that brought them together, so he tends to feel like he doesn’t belong. Stiles can see it in his eyes; he knows that look too well, has seen it in the mirror too many times. Being in a pack is a fantastic thing, but it means that you usually don’t fit in too well with the rest of the human world. He had worked hard for his position, and he was good at it, but sometimes it felt like he was pack first and everything else second or not at all.

Malia sprawls out on the floor next to Lydia, poking Stiles in the shin. “No thinking in the puppy pile.”

He nudges her side back with his toe because he’s allowed to, and she can’t even fight back because he’s injured. “At least not until Scott starts interrogating me.”

“After dinner.” Scott throws an arm around Stiles and starts pulling the pain away, which means that all of the tension in his body disappears at once and he almost falls over onto Lydia. “And then you’re going to get some goddamn sleep.”

Maybe, here, he finally will, and if he wakes up screaming he won’t scare them half to death like he did Derek. “Fine. Where’s Allison, anyway? If Lydia came back, I would have expected her to.”

“The Archery World Cup Stage 3 is finishing up. She should be here tomorrow.”

Cool. “And speaking of uncomfortable meetings with Argents, I need permission to bring Derek here to meet you guys.”

The entire pile stiffens, and he hears Isaac put a plate down a little too hard on the counter. But Scott’s voice is almost calm when he says, “No, you don’t.”

Right. “I should get your permission to bring him here so you don’t freak the fuck out and attack him when he shows up. Any of you.”

Scott grimaces, then sighs. “Yeah, you have permission, even though you know you don’t need to ask. But I can’t promise I’m going to like him.”

“Just try, at least.”

“Fine.” Isaac brings over the first two plates, which he shoves at Scott and then Stiles respectively. “Thank you.”

Stiles takes the plate, balancing it on Lydia’s shins, and she scowls at him. He grins back. “Thanks. I’ll—”

“You’re not doing the dishes.”

“—sit here and surround myself with pack.” Scott laughs like he doesn’t believe that’s what Stiles was going to say which, to be fair, it isn’t. “Shush. I’m eating.”

Isaac ferries over the rest of the plates, then grabs his own and sit down on the ground against Stiles’s legs, and they all eat.

It’s not until Stiles is full and sleepy and they’re all done eating that Scott speaks again. “Want to tell me what happened?”

Stiles opens his eyes enough to look at Scott, who looks concerned. Alpha-y concern, not is-this-person-going-to-freak-out-in-front-of-me concern, which is the only reason it’s palatable. “Not really.”

He laughs a little, and Lydia smiles. It’s not that alpha’s feelings control other people’s, exactly, but if the alpha’s happy, the rest of the pack tends to be, too, and vice versa. “Wrong answer.”

Right. Fine. “I went there because Alpha Hale asked me to, and because Derek did. Once I was there, in the middle of a meeting with them, the HFU attacked, presumably because the entire Hale pack was in the same place for the first time in…I have no idea how long. They took out the ashbreakers and set lines, and they were going to set the building on fire or kill all of us some other way.” He shrugs his good shoulder. “I held ashbreak and got shot, but we lived.”

“Did they force you to?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “We were in a building that was about to be set on fire. That forced me to do it. Derek didn’t even want me to, thought it was too dangerous.”

“It’s not like he was wrong there,” Lydia mutters, and if he weren’t feeling at peace for the first time in a week he might be annoyed at her.

Scott stares at him for another minute, then nods. “You were right; we all would have done it. No matter what I want. I’m not pissed at you, Stiles; get some sleep.”

“I might wake up screaming.”

Isaac nudges his head against Stiles’s knee and offers, “So might I.” Which is a hundred percent true, and with that, Stiles closes his eyes and slips to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who we see next chapter. :)


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles wakes up at five which, given the past week, is pretty damn good; he manages to extract himself from the huddled mass of bodies without waking anyone up (which is pretty impressive, if he may say so himself, because Isaac somehow ended up on top of him) and heads to the kitchen.

The dishes haven’t been done—no surprise there, considering that everyone passed out on the couch with him—so he starts washing them, balancing them against the sink so he can scrub them with one hand. He’ll cook later, because he’s not up for sitting still when nobody else is awake, but for right now he’s just going to scrub and scrub and wash away everything (blood, he hates blood, hates guns, hates all of this shit, there’s blood underneath his nails and it’s never going away no matter how hard he scrubs).

It takes him about three times longer than it usually would, but he gets it all done and starts on making coffee—his jitters have slowed, now, and he’s not worried that caffeine is going to make him shake so hard he breaks a plate—and pancakes. He makes about sixty, with some batter left over, because these are werewolves and he’s been around this rodeo a few times before, and then he sticks it all in the oven set to warming and turns to go sit at the table. And almost screams, because Scott is sitting there, watching him.

“What the fuck? How long have you been there?”

Scott laughs. “A few minutes. Your situational awareness needs work.”

Stiles pours two cups of coffee and carries them both by their handles (and doesn’t spill, ha) and hands one off to Scott, then takes a seat. “I know I’m safe here. What’s up?”

“Allison should be here soon—five or six hours. Your guy?”

“I texted him when I woke up, but he’s probably still sleeping, so I’m not sure. Chances are, he’ll probably get here today, but I’m not sure.” Stiles takes a long drink of coffee. “How’s the territory?”

Scott sighs. “It’s stable, but we’re getting—I don’t know. It should be fine, but it’s been quiet for so long, anything that happens is concerning.”

Fantastic. That’s just the fantastic fucking cherry on top of the fantastic fucking shit-show that is these past couple of weeks. “You want me to try the tree, or do you think that’s going to make things worse?”

“Probably can’t hurt. You want to wait until your boytoy shows up, or do you not want to subject him to the horror that is our territory?”

That is a very good point, actually. The tree isn’t something they really like to talk about, or show off, and showing it to Derek might be that final push over the edge that sends him away. And besides, it’s not like he really needs to know about it. “I’ll wait until Allison gets here, at least. I want the whole pack in-territory before I start poking around with anything.”

Scott nods. “Probably a good move.” He glances back at the pile of people on the couch, then looks at Stiles. “We can’t do this again. Not you getting hurt away from territory, not like that.”

“It’s not like I try to.”

“I know. I just—”

“Pancakes!”

Stiles nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound of Liam’s voice, and then Scott starts laughing and Stiles does too and he’s not sure how to stop. Because God, he loves his pack, loves these people, and yes, yes, there are pancakes.

It takes them a while to get through the pancakes, because even though they’re werewolves, they can’t eat more than one pancake at a time. And by can’t he means Scott told them they weren’t allowed to after Liam almost chocked to death trying to.

Kira sits basically in Scott’s lap as they eat, which would be great, except Isaac keeps shooting them looks from his spot halfway across the room, and it’s going to be even worse once Allison shows up, because it’s going to be a mess of four people who hadn’t gotten over each other.

The weird thing was that Allison and Scott fell apart right after she got out. It was like he could live with her until he learned that she had morals—and balls, Jesus, she could have lost everything and nearly did—and then he just couldn’t deal. But instead of making a clean break like sane people, the two of them went back and forth for almost a year before finally breaking it off for good.

And then Scott had a thing with Isaac, and then Allison slept with him, and then all of that disintegrated when everything went to hell and years later Scott ended up in bed with Kira.

And Stiles watched the whole thing and wished he had friends who would decide what they wanted so he didn’t have to play the game of who-will-I-walk-in-on-this-time Russian Roulette.

The answer, a disconcerting number of times, was all three of them (before Kira, of course, because Kira doesn’t share, and maybe they would all be better off if she did).

Lydia flops down on his lap after they’re done eating, probably to make sure he doesn’t get up and do something useful—they know he’s not going to shove her out of his lap, so she’s the one whose job it is to make him stay—and he curls an arm around her as she settles so she’s not against his bad arm. “You heard back from your boyfriend yet?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, not yet. But if he’s writing, he probably won’t check his phone for a while, so I’m not too worried.”

She laughs. “You really want him to come? Want him to face Scott? Your dad?”

Stiles nods. “Yeah. I mean, you guys are pack, and my dad is, well, my dad. I want the people I care about to know each other, and he’s the only one left.”

Lydia smiles up at him, and the smile is gentle. This is one of her soft times, one of those times when she isn’t all sharp corners and hard lines. He adores both parts of her, but this soft part, it’s something they don’t get to see very often. Him more than most, because they both work at the same school, but it’s still rare. “You love him, don’t you?”

“Sometimes.” He sighs, resting his forehead on hers. God, he misses touch like this sometimes. “Sometimes, I think so. I don’t want to keep sitting here.”

She pokes him in the side. “I don’t care. Are you planning on fucking with the Nemeton?”

Stiles groans, leaning his head back against the back of the chair. “Scott said the territory’s been acting up, and you know I’m the only one the tree likes.”

“Yeah.” She slumps down against his collarbone. “I’m going to sleep.”

Really? “Lydia, seriously? Weren’t you sleeping before?”

“Liam woke us up at six-thirty in the morning. Shut the fuck up and let me sleep.” And then, by all indications, she drops off to sleep against his chest, which means that he’s not going to be able to get up any time soon. It’s like she’s a cat; she’ll get pissy if he tries to move her. And even though this feels fantastic, he really doesn’t want to be stuck sitting here until she wakes up.

Across the room, Scott grins at him, and he shoots him the finger.

\--

Allison shows up at eleven, which Stiles finds out when she grabs the top of his head, jolting him awake and sending him flailing, which hurts like a motherfucker. “Jesus Christ.” He cradles his arm, because wow that really fucking hurts, and she pats him on the side of the neck.

“Not quite, but close.” She walks around him to stand in front of him, hands on her hips. “You really got yourself fucked up, didn’t you?”

“Motherfucker. Ow. Yeah. How was the competition?”

Allison shrugs, but a smug smile crosses her face. “You’re looking at the number one in the world. Well, for Round Three, but anyway.”

“Congratulations.” He holds his good hand out to her, and she hauls him to his feet. “Ugh. I hate getting shot.”

“Don’t we all. How much fox-wolf love am I going to need to stare at today?”

“Ask Isaac; I’m trying not to watch.” Stiles goes back to cradling his arm, because wow, that really hurts. “And then I’m going to go poke at the tree for a while, because apparently shit is starting to go down again.”

“You want someone to come with you?”

He laughs. “Unfortunately, shooting it won’t do shit. And besides, it’s not too fond of you; it might not talk to me if you’re there.”

“It’s not like it’s a person.” He just looks at her until she laughs. “Right. Yeah. You know Scott is going to escort you out there, right?”

“And Isaac, too, and probably Malia and Liam and Lydia.” Which really, “Where are they, anyway?”

She shrugs. “No idea. Probably food shopping or figuring out how better to coddle you or something. You know you’ll be lucky if they let you go back to your job, right?”

Yeah, he knows that, and it’s going to be a problem, because he has a class to teach on Monday and he doesn’t want to make his students go through another online course. They work everyone once in a while, but he won’t do that to them for a second time in two weeks.

But he doesn’t want to talk about that, so instead he says, “Thanks for coming back.”

“What else would I do?” She pushes at the side of his head. “We’re pack, aren’t we, even though you spend even less time at home than I do.”

“I have a job.”

“Lydia gets home, at least.”

Stiles groans. “Can we not? Please? I get enough of a guilt trip from the rest of the pack; you should give me a break.”

Allison stares at him for a second, then nods. “Yeah, fine. How is everyone, by the way?”

“Isaac was trigger pretty badly yesterday, so he’s a bit…” Stiles see-saws his good hand back and forth. “Scott’s stressed as hell about my shoulder, and that’s kind of infecting everything else, but it’s pretty good otherwise.” He sucks in a deep breath then lets it out. “I want things to be okay. I know I’m the one fucking things up, but I need things to be stable.”

“They will be. You know that.” She sighs. “We know that, we’ve done that. It’s a game we’ve all played. Are you planning on telling them before you head out?”

“Maybe some other time I would sneak out without saying anything, but right now it’s too…” Fragile. Broken. FUBAR. He doesn’t need to finish the sentence; she knows just as well as he does.

And that might be the saddest thing of all.

\--

They head out to the tree once the rest of the pack gets back to the apartment from their food shopping (or, it seems, Lydia’s food shopping and everyone else’s carrying bags and bitching); they can almost only find it when he’s with them, and sometimes not even then, but apparently the tree is happy with him today, because it only takes about fifteen minutes of trekking through the woods to reach it.

The tree stump—the Nemeton, but he doesn’t like calling it that aloud—is a hybrid cross between a tree, a nest of evil fireflies, and a sentient being, and if there’s one thing Stiles regrets about the whole situation it’s that they got involved with it. But there’s very little he can do about it now, and he’ll play the cards he’s dealt.

He stops a couple feet from the tree, the rest of the pack (or at least Scott and Isaac and Lydia) stopped a couple of trees behind. Because the tree only lets people other than him in sometimes, even when he asks, and that is not a privilege he would ever ask for. It’s wide enough for at least two people to lie down side-by-side on, which Stiles knows from having had the dubious pleasure of doing so, and it’s only about a foot-and-a-half tall; it looks like it was once massive, and he doesn’t want to know what happened to the poor fuckup who chopped it down.

One firefly wanders its way out of a crack to fly up to him, and he holds his hand up to let it land because otherwise it’s liable to try to burrow its way up his nose. Again.

He takes in a breath and—

Blinks, and he’s on the ground, blood in his throat and spilling from between his lips, and he’s choking and coughing and his shoulder is _screaming_ as he uncurls himself from the dirt. “Motherfucker.” His friends are still hiding from the tree, he assumes, given that they’re not currently hovering around him, and that means he’s going to have to get up and walk back over to them on his own.

Which might not happen, because he’s not sure if he can get himself up off the ground. There’s no way in hell is bad arm is going to take his weight, not right now.

“Stiles?”

Stiles coughs some more blood out of his mouth and shifts so he can see Scott. “I’m good.” He spits another glob of blood out, and it congeals in the dirt. “A-okay. Just give me a minute.”

“You want me to—”

He shakes his head. “Nah. Tree’s not real happy right now. Better to stay away.”

“You sure?”

Stiles tries to push himself up, can’t hold in a low noise deep in his throat. Okay, that’s going to take a minute. “Yeah. I really don’t want any backlash.” He drags the clean-ish back of his hand against his mouth, trying to get some of the blood off, then braces himself against the ground (not the tree, he really wants to never touch that tree again in his life if he can help it) and levers himself up to his feet.

He sways a bit on his feet, but his knees hold, and he starts staggering towards his friends. Isaac catches him as soon as he’s past the invisible line they don’t like crossing, holding him half off the ground; he looks like he wants to pick him up in a bridal carry and haul him back to the apartment by foot. It’s an adorable, if a bit discomfiting, look.

“I can debrief you now if you want.”

Scott looks like he wants to grab at Stiles’s other side, but that’s the side with the gunshot wound that feels like it was just shot again, so that’s not happening. “That’s funny.” He reaches out and grabs the side of Stiles’s neck, pulling the pain like it’s nothing. Not even a flinch. “We’re getting you home—pack home—and then you can tell me what’s going on with the goddamn tree.”

“‘kay.” He is kind of up for passing out at the moment, and he knows they would catch him if he did, but he should probably would out of his forest, so he makes himself stand. Ish. And then all of the blood rushes from his head and things go fuzzy and bright and away.

When he surfaces, they’re most of the way out of the forest, and he’s slung into Scott’s arms like some oversized kid who fell asleep at a party. “You can put me down if you want.” Scott ignores him, which is actually kind of insulting. “Seriously. Fido. Let go.”

“I like to think of myself more as a Lassie than as a Fido.”

Stiles laughs at that, which would hurt if there weren’t a hardcore pain-drain spider-webbing up Scott’s veins. “Fine. Whatever. I can walk.”

“Sure.” Scott shrugs a shoulder with no apparent difficulty. “It’s easier this way, anyway. Too much trouble to put you down.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

Scott doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t let go, which is really fucking annoying, and actually kind of nice.

\--

Scott lets him walk from the car to the apartment, which is good, because Derek is standing with a duffel bag outside the door, and he would freak the fuck out if he saw Stiles being carried like an invalid. It’s obvious he wants to approach—his hands are in fists at his sides, his entire body tense—but he holds himself still as the four of them approach.

Scott greets him first with a handshake and no eye-flashing, as is proper—because they have to observe propriety, them, the weird-ass pack that has fewer werewolves than non-werewolves—and then he nods to Stiles, who walks over and gives him a hug. Because fuck propriety and because they both need it.

Derek curls up around him like he’s trying to turn himself into a blanket, and Stiles buries his face in his neck and just breathes, feeling everything settle inside of him. It was good to be away for a few days, but it’s better now being with him.

And then the door—which is behind Stiles now, wow, that was a rotation he didn’t notice happening—opens and as Derek goes rigid against him a voice behind him says, “Oh my God.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There should be one more chapter in this part, though there will be more.
> 
> Also, yes, the Nemeton is a thing. I like the Nemeton. It's basically my favorite Teen Wolf villain (actually, no, I love the Nogitsune, but it's a close second).
> 
> I'm thinking of having the next part (or one of the next parts) be the story of Allison getting out of the HFU. Is there anything else you want to see, backstory-wise? 
> 
> I know I've been hinting at a lot of stuff that's happened, and some of it will be addressed later in this part. I want to keep it close to what happened but without having had Derek or the Hales involved (and how that happened will be explained, I promise).


	4. Chapter 4

Derek shoves Stiles behind him, leaving him blinking at his back, and oh fuck this is going to go badly. Because Derek is growling and Allison is sheet white in front of him, and this is really not going to go well.

“Derek—”

“What are you doing here?” His voice is hard, harder than Stiles has heard it before, and his claws are out. From his posture and the tension vibrating through his body, he looks like he’s about fifteen seconds from tearing out Allison’s throat. Which will not end well. “What do you want, _Argent_?”

Allison flinches. “I’m sorry for Kate’s actions, but I had nothing to do with it. I’m out of the HFU and we’re not with my family anymore.”

The growls get louder. “Hunters never leave and they never reform. And they don’t join packs, so whatever you’re doing here, it’s not for their benefit.”

Okay. Whoa. “De—”

Her jaw sets. “Look, it’s awful that my aunt fucked you to get to your family, but I’m not—”

Derek lunges, and Stiles wraps both arms around his stomach because even though he can’t hold him back in any physical sense he might be able to keep him grounded in reality enough to not maul Allison. Which of course is not necessary, because Scott moves between them (and where the hell was he before) and growls at Derek until he goes rigid and still in Stiles’s arms.

Stiles hauls him back a few steps, murmuring, “Hey, hey, it’s okay, calm down, calm down, it’s okay.” He keeps up a stream of half-formed thoughts and keeps his hands where they are because Derek is still vibrating with rage and that could be a really dangerous thing. “Shh, c’mon, it’s okay, but you need to calm down before this turns into something we all regret.”

Derek stays rigid for another second, and then all of the tension drains from his body and he goes limp, nails retracting back into his fingers. “Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck. Sorry.”

He turns in Stiles’s arm, giving him a kiss, then freezes. “Why do you taste like blood?”

Fuck. “I had a nosebleed and swallowed some of it. I’m fine, I just haven’t had a chance to wash my mouth out yet.”

“Okay.” He puts a hand on the small of Stiles’s back, turning them so they’re facing Scott and Allison. Isaac and Lydia aren’t there, probably because Isaac doesn’t do well with confrontation and Lydia would have brought him in. Scott’s saying something to Allison, too low for him to make out, and Derek waits for him to finish before saying, “I apologize for that. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

Allison shakes her head. “No, I shouldn’t have—that wasn’t appropriate or fair of me. What my aunt did was unforgiveable, and my father and I have done our best to separate ourselves from her and the rest of our family. I should never have brought any of it up, especially not like that. I’m sorry.”

That was probably the most heartfelt apology Stiles had ever heard from her, though that’s mostly because Allison hates apologizing. Not that anyone likes apologies, but she _really_ hates them.

Derek nods, and then Scott’s eyes meet Stiles’s, and right. “Derek, can you go inside, and I’ll join you in a couple minutes?”

“Stiles—”

“I need to talk to my Alpha alone.” He pokes him in the ribs to keep this from getting too awkward. “Come on. Go. Shoo. Please.”

Derek rolls his eyes at him, then nods to Scott and starts to walk towards the door, skirting a wide berth around Allison to get there. Once he’s inside, Scott turns to Allison. “Please.”

She nods, then looks at Stiles. “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting—the Hales don’t come here anymore.”

There’s not much Stiles can say to make this less awkward (and he does have enough impulse control to know that and not start babbling) so he just gives her a small smile. She smiles back then heads back into the apartment, leaving just Scott and Stiles.

As soon as the door closes, Scott slumps against the wall, sighing. “You really do make things complicated, don’t you?”

“I do what I can.” Stiles scrubs a hand across his mouth. “The tree.”

“The tree,” Scott agrees, like he said something profound, and sometimes it feels like it. That goddamn tree. “Do you know what’s going on? Did it do anything?”

He can still taste blood in his mouth. “Queen to G3.” Scott blinks at him. “I played chess with it. A couple of moves, I think; we never play a full game, and sometimes we start in the middle, so it’s kind of hard to keep track. It was a weird move.” He has to pull his memories together, chess moves tangled with impressions and feelings that are translating from magic tree to human being. “I think it’s unsettled. Or—not confused. There’s not a—there’s not a word for it, but it’s not settled, not like it usually is. I don’t know if something’s coming or if something’s here or if it just ate some small woodland creature that didn’t agree with it, but it’s not happy.”

“Which tells us nothing.”

“Which tells us—yeah, no, that tells us nothing. I hate this tree.” He drags a hand through his hair. “I’m thinking, until we know what’s going on, we shouldn’t tell the rest of the pack. It’s not worth it for them to panic when it could be nothing.”

“Yeah.” Scott looks back at the apartment then meets Stiles’s eye. “I get why you stay away, you know. I get that you need your own space, that you need to be somewhere that isn’t under threat of attack all the time. But you should know—you have to know—that you can come home whenever you want and all of us will push you away.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Let’s go, then, before Lydia slits your boyfriend’s throat.”

\--

Derek looks amazingly uncomfortable on his spot in one of the one-and-a-half chairs, and Stiles flops lengthwise on top of him so he’s sitting sideways on his lap with his feet up across one arm and his back against the other arm. His shoulder is throbbing again, but he’s getting kind of used to it, and he’s almost due for more pain medication. “Hi.”

Derek looks at him, and there’s almost a smile (yay) on his face. “Hi. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just some business to take care of before we got distracted and forgot.” Stiles looks across the room at Lydia, Allison, and Isaac, who are on the cuddling-couch, and Malia, who’s sprawled across the floor. “Why are you having a staring contest with my boyfriend?”

Isaac’s lip curls up to bare one long fang. “He got you hurt.”

Derek flinches (and no, this isn’t acceptable, Derek doesn’t need any more guilt about what happened), and Stiles says, “Nope. The HFU got me hurt, and you don’t see me beating down Chris’s door, so lay off. Anyway. Everyone, this is Derek. Derek, this is Lydia, Allison, Isaac, and Malia.”

Derek starts at the last one, when Malia puts her hand up from where she’s lying on the ground. “You look—” He breaks off whatever he’s saying, and okay, fun. “It’s nice to meet all of you.”

Scott walks in and leans against the arm of the couch next to Isaac, nodding to Derek. “I spoke to your Alpha”—and hello, that’s news—“and she’s taken responsibility for Stiles’s injury.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “It was the HFU, not Alpha Hale. She didn’t shoot me. Not her fault.”

“She did bring you there.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, because this is really ridiculous. “I brought myself there. Or, well, a plane did, and then a taxi, but it was my choice. I could have said no. Stop it, Scott. Seriously. All of you. Let it go.”

Scott keeps his eyes on Derek for a minute, then looks at Stiles. “Fine. So, Derek, Stiles’s says you’re a writer.”

With a groan, Stiles buries his face in Derek’s chest, ignoring the laughs of his pack.

\--

A few hours—and way too much interrogation—later, Derek and Stiles head out of the apartment. Derek is silent, which is kind of par for the course, but Stiles wants to talk, wants to babble, wants to get his nerves out through his words, so silence just isn’t doing it for him. “So what did you think? Of my pack? Of the pack. I don’t know if I can call it my pack, because it’s not like I own it, but it is the pack that I belong to, so—yeah. Anyway. What did you think?”

Derek puts an arm around him and pulls him close like he can’t stand not to be touching to him, which is a really nice feeling. “I think you didn’t really properly explain your position in it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It’s not like he’s with anyone or anything, and his pack does love him, so he’s not sure what that’s about.

“The way they treat you, it’s like the way we treated Laura be-before. Like if anything ever happened to Mom, she would—we would follow her. And they—I don’t really know why they treat you like that, because it’s not like you can be heir.”

He had never thought about that before, not really, though it makes sense when it’s put aloud like that. “We—I don’t know how much you know about what happened here, but—my sophomore year of high school, Scott was bitten by a rogue. Hunters were trying to get to him, but he beat them to Beacon Hills and got to Scott and then disappeared. I figured out what happened before Scott did; he’s not the most…perceptive of people, and especially wasn’t then.

“The rogue spent the next couple months trying to get Scott to join him, going after increasingly vulnerable targets like his mother.” It’s easier to talk about like this, like it’s some sort of report about something that happened to someone else. Like he doesn’t still have nightmares about this and about everything that happened after. “Finally, he went after someone from our school, trying to get him to join—he wanted it, but he didn’t know what he wanted—and we had to kill him.” And now this is the part he doesn’t want to talk about. “He—Scott was supposed to do it, but it—I’m his sin-eater, you know.”

Derek looks at him but doesn’t say anything, and fuck, Stiles really doesn’t want to have to explain this. But it’s not like it’s a secret, not really, and he probably should know. “Scott doesn’t do well with killing, or didn’t, not back them. I mean, no sixteen-year-old should. But he’s too—he’s too softhearted. He would rather talk than fight, and sometimes talking just isn’t an option. So I did it.” It sounds easy like that, like oh, I just killed a rogue werewolf, easy-peasy, no sweat. But it was sweat and blood and getting too close to death for anyone’s comfort.

“So I would have been Alpha, I guess, if I had been a werewolf and part of the pack. But I wasn’t, so I just ended up…just ended up the sin-eater, the right-hand, whatever you want to call it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No, not your fault, and it’s not like you could have found out anyway if you wanted to. And hey, a year of therapy where I couldn’t talk about what happened makes me willing to talk about my feelings.”

Derek moves his hand to curl it around the back of Stiles’s neck, and Stiles closes his eyes for a minute as they walk, trusting that Derek won’t let him trip. Having the hand there is grounding, which he needs, because talking about this makes him feel like he’s going to crawl his way out of his skin, or disconnect and shrink inside of himself until he’s just rattling around inside. So having that touch, having something concrete on his skin, it holds him don’t so he can’t fly away.

“Anyway,” Stiles says finally, opening his eyes and clapping his hands together, “time for you to meet my dad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one chapter left in this part, and then I'll probably move on to how Allison got out of the HFU.
> 
> The other things I want to write are about the increasing political issues, about what's going on in Beacon Hills, about the Scott-Kira-Allison-Isaac mess, and at least one piece about the Stiles's fall Werewolf 101 class.
> 
> Also, wow, this is gotten so much bigger than I intended when I wrote that first piece. 
> 
> If there are pieces/scenes that you guys (I really need a more gender-neutral version of guys) want to see, let me know, and I'll see if they fit.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a...warning (note?), there are brief naked times here. They aren't at all sexual, hence why I haven't changed the rating, but just FYI.

They end up on the couch in his living room with an hour and a half before his dad is getting home from his shift, Stiles with his feet in Derek’s lap, one hand behind his head to prop himself up. Derek is looking fondly at him, and even though they will need to talk at some point, he has no intention of doing it now.

Derek’s smile widens. “What?”

“What what?”

“You’re looking at me.”

“That’s a thing I do.” Stiles pulls his good arm and holds it out to him. “Come ravish me. I’m feeling distinctly unravished.”

“You’re injured.”

Stiles grins at him, starting to lower his arm. “I can ravish myself if you don’t think you’re up to—”

Derek is on top of him before he notices him moving, hands bracketing his head, pressing his good arm down to the couch. “I don’t think so.”

“You have something better in mind?”

Stiles opens his mouth to respond, and Derek’s lips close over his, hard and hot, teeth pulling at his lower lip. “You look so fucking alluring down there, saying you’re going to ravish yourself.” He sucks Stiles’s lip into his mouth, then moves down to his neck, and distantly Stiles hopes he doesn’t end up with hickies. “But you smell like blood.” His hand contracts on Stiles’s wrist. “I hate that.”

Stiles would like this, except he doesn’t want to deal with this right now; he just wants to make out with his boyfriend. So he arches up and says, “Not now.”

Derek pulls away just enough to blink down at him for a second then lowers his head to start kissing him again, soft and wet and warm and so different from usual, and Stiles breathes in and kisses him back.

\--

“You have five seconds to stop before I throw coffee on both of you.”

Derek jerks up and away from Stiles, who flinches off of the couch and falls on the floor. Which hurts. A lot. And by the time he gets his breath back, Derek and Stiles’s dad are in the middle of a staring contest.

So okay, yeah, this is not how he was hoping to have Derek and his dad meet.

“Hi, Dad.”

His dad doesn’t look away from Derek. “Hi, Stiles.  Can’t say I expected to find you making out with your boyfriend on my couch.”

‘We expected to be done before you got home’ is probably not the best response in this case, so Stiles just says, “Yeah, sorry.” And then he tries to figure out how to get up, which might not go so well, because his arm feels like someone literally just set it on fire. Which, ow, fuck. “A little help here?”

Derek crouches and pulls Stiles’s good arm over his shoulder, levering him up and wrapping his arm around his waist. Stiles would feel more awkward about being this close to his boyfriend except he really needs the help, and also he was just found making out with him, and that kind of trumps standing really close.

“So.”

His dad’s mouth twitches. “So.”

“Derek, this is my dad. Dad, this is Derek, my boyfriend.”

Derek’s arm tightens around him, and Stiles’s dad’s smile grows a little bit more. “As opposed to the other Derek you have in your life?” He looks at Derek. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You too, Sheriff.” And right, fuck, the last time Derek saw his dad, it was right after his house had burned down. Because Stiles thinks these things through. “Laura says hi. And thanks.”

“How is she? Most of what I’ve heard recently has been from the news on the attack.”

Derek flinches against him, and okay, low blow. “We’re not doing this.” Stiles considers crossing his arms across his chest, except, yeah, that will hurt. “You get it? Scott did it, the rest of the pack did it, you’re not going to do the whole, everything was Derek’s fault thing. Because it wasn’t. He didn’t shoot me. Laura didn’t shoot me. Even Peter, lunatic that he is—sorry, Derek, but your uncle is nuts—didn’t shoot me. So just…if you’re going to be pissed at anyone, be pissed at me.”

Derek leans down to him, whispering, “Nobody’s angry at you.”

That’s funny. “Everyone’s angry at me. We’ve been over this. But seriously, stop doing this Derek.”

“It’s fine.”

His dad looks between the two of them, then nods. “Who wants dinner?”

\--

Dinner is weird. His dad brought home fried chicken—not allowed, dad, what are you doing—and they sit there eating chicken and biscuits and weird boiled corn with too much pepper and not enough salt and not talking. At all.

Which is weird, because Stiles is a talker. Always. But Derek looks like he doesn’t know what to say to Stiles’s dad, and his dad is eating like he’s never going to eat again. And Stiles is mostly trying to eat with one hand without dropping corn everywhere.

Finally, his dad clears his throat and says, “Are you ever going to speak to me again?”

Stiles blinks at him. “What?”

“You’re not talking.”

Agh. “I’m eating. You two talk. Or, like, nod in each other’s direction.” They both blink at him. “Look, this is weird. Because I care about both of you, and also you keep looking at each other like you’re expecting the other person to bite, and basically anything I say is going to make that worse, so…that was a lot more than I expected to say.” He stabs a fork at his corn, which scatters shoots off of his plate and scatters everywhere. “Fuck.”

“Language.”

Stiles tries to start picking up the corn, which isn’t actually picking up, and damn it, he hates not having two working hands. “Yeah, okay. Damn it.” Derek’s hand settles on his back, and he drops the fork down on his plate with a clatter. “Sorry. Can we get this—like, maybe this is just me being selfish, and you can say no—but can we get this whole thing about why the two of you know each other out of the way so we all know what we can talk about?”

Derek scrubs his free hand across his mouth then says, “I see no need to turn this into a therapy session. Yes, it’s bizarre being back in Beacon Hills, and yes, Sherriff, it is bizarre seeing you again, but I’m not having traumatic flashbacks. It’s fine.”

“Good. That’s good.” Stiles picks up his fork to try to pick up a piece of corn, and it flies out and lands on his dad’s plate. “Here, have some corn.”

His dad snorts. “Thanks.”

“No problem. You want some more? I’m working on my aim.”

“I can tell.” He looks around at the corn scattered around the table. “The improvement is clear.”

“I try.”

Derek makes a noise next to him, and when Stiles looks over at him, he’s laughing, the hand not on Stiles’s back pressed against his mouth. And that’s a sound Stiles wants to hear more.

His dad smiles as well. “If you would like to talk to someone about your family, I knew your parents well.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And if you ever hurt Stiles, I’ll kill you. Or at least look the other way while Scott does it.”

Derek nods, and the smile isn’t really gone, which is fantastic and a little bit bizarre. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Really? “I can take care of myself.”

His dad shrugs. “Then I’ll look the other way while you do it. Either way.”

“Better.” His shoulder throbs (and wow he really needs to take his next dose of pain medication), and he fights the urge to flinch and rub it. Because, one, that will make it hurt more, and two, they’ll both feel guilty and it’ll make things awkward. So he just stabs another piece of corn, and this time it actually goes on his fork. “Ha. Success.”

\--

After dinner, when Stiles is trying to help clean and his dad and Derek are plotting against him by insisting that he stay out of the kitchen, he finds himself standing alone in the living room, staring at the picture of his family sitting on the bookcase. It’s his original family, the only picture he knows of with him and both of his parents. They’re in front of the Sherriff Station at the anniversary of the founding of the town, and his parents have their arms around each other, with a four-year-old Stiles sitting on his dad’s shoulders. And they look happy.

It’s weird how missing his mother works. He can months without thinking about her, and then the second he comes home it’s like there’s a giant hole in his life that he doesn’t know how he lives without. Because she was their light, their joy, and then she fell apart as things slipped from her fingers—as things slipped from their fingers, as they tried to help her hold on—and that light went out.

And it’s been so long, and so much has changed, but it’s still like he’s looking for that light in the dark, and nothing is quite filling it properly.

But his new family—his friends and his pack and his dad and maybe Derek—comes close.

“So where do you want to go?”

“Huh?” Stiles turns to look at Derek, who’s standing behind him, a small smile on his face. He looks more at peace now than he did before, which is fantastic. He doesn’t look quiet as calm as he had with Laura, but it’s better than when he first met Allison, or when his dad first showed up.

Derek slides a hand around his waist. “I have a hotel room where you can stay with me, or you can—”

“Yes.”

“Yes to?”

“Hotel room. Duh. Because I want you to ravish me, and that’s not going to happen in here.” He looks at the couch, where the cushions look like people were rolling around on them. Which is true.

“I can hear you,” his dad shouts, and Stiles sticks his tongue out even though he knows his dad can’t see.

“Then stop listening,” he shouts back, then grins at Derek. “Come on. Hotel. Actually, I need to grab my stuff. But then hotel.”

\--

The hotel room is huge. Of course, Stiles is probably a little bit biased, given that he’s lived in, in order, his bedroom, a dorm room, and then a series of shitty apartments. He finally upgraded to a one-bedroom.

This is a suite. Like, with multiple rooms (two, kind of, plus a bathroom, but still, that’s like a full almost-three, which is wild) and a couch and two chairs and giant bed and what looks like an awesome shower and yes, maybe Stiles is running around like a little kid, but it’s _cool_.

“Having fun?”

Stiles turns and grins at him. “Yep. It’s—” He raises his arms up to gesture at the grandness, and ow, son of a bitch, that hurts. “Fuck.” Yeah, no, that arm is staying down, and maybe he’ll figure out a way to just never move it. Again. Ever. “Fuck. Ow. Fuck.”

Derek moves towards Stiles, then stop, grabs his bag, and approaches. “You should take your pain medication. When was the last time you took it?”

“A—” He starts to shrug, realizes that’s a really fucking bad idea, and stops. “A while ago. I can take more.”

Derek pulls out a bottle and hands it to him, then pulls out another. “Which one?”

Stiles looks at the one in his hand, then holds it out. “That one. It’s pretty hard core, so it’s basically going to knock me out, but I’m probably not going to get much sleep otherwise, and if I took these now I wouldn’t be able to take those.”

Derek shakes out one pill from the bottle he’s holding before setting the bottle back in the bag and switching bottle for pill with Stiles. “I’ll get you some water.”

“Thanks.”

It only takes a few seconds for Derek to come back with the water, and Stiles drains it with a pill—he got good at taking pills from his Adderall—and hands it back. And then he just stands there, holding his not-immobilized-enough-damn-it arm against his body and trying to breathe.

They end up on the couch after that, making out without any particular purpose except to make out because Stiles is really not up for sex at the moment no matter how much he had talked about ravishing, Stiles sucking on Derek’s lower lip and getting nice noises from it until he realizes that he’s mouthing at Derek’s jaw, and wow he’s going to have beard burn, and he’s not sure he’s tracking things very well anymore.

But he feels not-hurty and floaty and nice, so he goes back to licking at Derek’s jaw, and his ear, and it’s a very nice ear, except now there’s hair in his mouth and that’s pretty gross, and then Derek’s face moves away, except that’s his body moving away, and no, wait, come back Derek’s face, he wants that.

Derek laughs at him, and Stiles laughs back, because something must be funny. “Okay,” Derek says, “no more of this. I’m not making out with you while you’re high.”

“But it’s _fun_ ,” Stiles whines, which doesn’t do any good, except now Derek’s arms are around him which is yay, and they’re moving, which is less yay. “Why are we going?”

“Shower.” Derek moves them to a room with a giant shower, putting Stiles down on the toilet seat and turning the shower on, and Stiles moves towards it because shower. “Hey, wait, no, sit down.” He pushes Stiles down again then starts unbuttoning his shirt. “How do you feel?”

“Floating-y.”

“Okay.” Derek pulls the immobilizy-thingy off of his arm, then then shirt, then says, “Pants.”

Stiles pokes at them. “Pants.”

“No, okay, we’re going to get your pants off. And your socks.” And then he pulls Stiles’s socks off and then reaches up and unbuttons his pants, and Stiles feels like that’s supposed to do something, but nothing happens, so oh well. “Come on, you need to stand up now.”

But he made him sit down before. But Stiles stands anyway, because Derek asked and Stiles likes Derek, and Derek pulls his pants and his boxers down and picks up one of Stiles’s feet to pull them off and then puts it down and picks up the other foot to pull them off more. And then room is full of steam now, and it’s warm, and Stiles pokes at Derek with his toe because it’s funny.

Derek pulls off all of his clothes, then puts a hand on Stiles’s back, and that feels really good, and then he moves him into the shower, and water falls on his head. “I’m going to get you clean now. Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Mm.” There was supposed to be a word there, but the water feels good, and it’s warm, and Stiles doesn’t really want to do words now. He always does words. Sometimes it’s nice to not do words.

Derek’s hand is back on his back, and then his side, and then his other side, and there’s soap, and it feels good, and Stiles says, “Mm,” again and closes his eyes because Derek isn’t going to let him fall because Derek likes him and you don’t let people fall when you like them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the end of Pack. Next I'll start the thing for Allison's back story, and then (or maybe between posting chapters of that, because it might be a few chapters long) I'll post a kink negotiation scene set directly after Hands.
> 
> Following that, I'll probably go back to plot-y things (with some fluff, too, because I'm a sucker for fluff). I'm between the political vote-brings-heat-on-Hales-and-so-also-Stiles route and the things-are-going-on-in-Beacon-Hills route, though I might do both if I don't think it'll become too complicated. I also, like I said, want to explore the Scott-Kira-Allison-Isaac thing, though I'm not sure when I'll get to that.
> 
> This became way bigger than I was planning. Like, this is a kind of giant endeavor now. Which is cool, but still, wow.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: I changed "Erica and Boyd" to "Aiden", so if you saw that and were confused, sorry.
> 
> Sorry that this chapter is pretty short, but this installment will have a few chapters. Probably around 4, though it depends on how long it takes for stuff to happen.
> 
> Also, if you're going, when did that conversation about their boundaries happen, don't worry, I haven't actually written it. It would take place after Hands, when they have the kink negotiation they should have had before Hands, but I figured nobody wants to read just kink negotiations, so I just alluded to it.
> 
> The rating may change but it'll probably stay at Teen.


End file.
